hi, first I write what I like - the colors and simple menu - i think you do not need change it, and I like the preview function, what I hate - star system, only five stars for the differentiation of many different anime? should be a more greater scale, for example, everyone who downloads or look amv should fill all the stats like in the opinion, what would be nice - I like preview in the first page, pity that there are only the best recent films, what with other ? there are so many in the database, should be below five random vids and videos those people who give a lot opinions - should be more often showed

godix wrote:I'd just like to point out something I've said elsewhere, clearly the requirement to log in to download/view videos is a disincentive to some users. Things really should be as simple as click on link to the video's profile, click on play....

Quoted cause I got this idea from it. You could allow people to preview amvs as non-members and allow them to download amvs only after they have signed up and logged in. This way, people can watch the amv quickly without the hassle of signing up if they want to, and we also encourage participation on the org at the same time.

"The people cannot be [...] always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to [...] the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to public liberty. What country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned [...] that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."-Thomas Jefferson

As I pointed out in the other thread, I think there were official reasons for requiring registration beyond simple data tracking and I feel they had something to do with protecting ourselves from the take down requests and the cease and desists and the lawsuits that would come if we became the youtube of AMVs. We have no defense from the music groups, and the tone of the address Phade gave to the community after the Wind-Up records things makes me think we wouldn't even try to mount one for fair-use from the anime side of things.

I'll keep my discussion to this thread since it makes more sense to keep it organized...It would be a risk you are right.. but the fact we are trying to get more people to come to the site we are going to have to take a similar risk either way.But is getting new people to join the site worth the risk? I don't know, I do know that making previews free for everyone to see would be a tool I'd love to use, I'd prefer linking to the org over youtube.

Maybe if the previews only showed a portion of the vid. The problem with audio is that we usually use the entire song and you can't argue fair use if you're giving the entire song over. If the non-member previews only showed a portion of the song, then it should be fine legally. And then visitors would *really* have a reason to log in - to see the rest of the video and download it if they like it. This would also work with the stars/qcs since they wouldn't have watched enough of the video to leave one - and we don't want them to leave one if they're not logged in since we wouldn't be able to limit it to one star per member per vid.

I don't think it's too much to ask for people to make an account and log in. It's a one time ordeal that takes about five minutes and grants them unlimited downloading and previewing and forum posting afterward. Plenty of people make youtube accounts just to leave signed reviews on videos, join channels, and make out their favorites lists. They shouldn't have a problem making an account here just like they do over there. Assuming the confirmation emails are working properly and don't suffer delays... We want to attract new members, not a whole bunch of one-time visitors who will eat up our bandwidth and never make an account, let alone participate or donate. Aside from the pageview count and the bandwidth used for those vids, we'd never even know a bunch of annonymous people passed by. If we don't give them a reason to join, will any of them bother to join? They don't know what we're offering until after they join, so they won't even know what they're missing. Free full-length previews would definitely increase the org's name among people on the tube - high quality previews of vids that won't have audio and video deleted. But we don't have annonymous reviews here, so those editors won't be getting the feedback they're used to, so what's the point? They'd just use the org as a hosting service and list the vids on lj and such, sending people here to watch and then come back to their site to praise and talk about the vid. The org would be megaupload, in other words. We want the org to be the center of the community, not the place where people from other communities host things for free.

[I'm just as guilty of sending people from other forums here to get copies of vids, but I do so knowing they'll have to join in order to download. If they don't have to join, I'd be encouraging them to leech and I'd rather they leech from megavideo than the org. ^^; ]

Even making it members only to view won't save us legal troubles We can STILL get in trouble, remember Wind-up? So your argument of "can't use fair use" should really mean we can't host ANY amvs that use whole songs, and allow them for download or viewing for members or no.

As for ratings, just don't allow non-logged in people to rate anything. Simple as that.

I don't think it's too much to ask people to log in either, however it would be advantageous for some people to be able to share the link without having to tell someone that they can only view the video if they sign up. It would be convenient, and easier. We also don't need a bunch of dead one time accounts created by people who only came to watch one video.

If the person who has the videos shared with them wants to sign up to gain more advantages such as: commenting, rating, creating playlists, downloading, participating, (just like those youtube members you mentioned) then there is nothing wrong with having people create accounts to participate. No one ever said anything about letting non-members have all the advantages of members, just allowing non-members to VIEW preview versions of videos.

As for people hosting here and taking the discussion elsewhere: I already have seen plenty of people do that. So, I highly doubt that making previews available for viewing will change that pattern of behavior. If people don't want to participate here then that is their choice.

But we don't have annonymous reviews here, so those editors won't be getting the feedback they're used to, so what's the point?

Eeeeh wut? Since when does Youtube have anonymous comments? I think you may have that backwards... or something was phrased wrong O.o

Besides, I wish we would get rid of anonymous comments we have on here anyway, but that's been my stance from the beginning of QCs.. I've been pretty reserved on what I really think of QCs.. but to put it mildly, they hold no weight to me when compared to a review left through the op system which links back to the person who left it. Youtube comments hold more weight to me than the QCs here.

JaddziaDax wrote:Even making it members only to view won't save us legal troubles.

The only way to save legal trouble is to close the site. I was talking about saving us from additional legal trouble. Adding previews visible to anyone who googles amvs would cause additional legal trouble. Adding partial previews would not. With partials it would give the "previews for non-members" advocates something while also accepting the validity of the "if we become the tube, we will have legal trouble the size of the tube" stance. I was offering a compromise.

Personally, I don't think we should have any streaming on the org. It makes me more likely to restream a video than to download it, and to forget all about it the second I'm done, which means no ops, and a lot of excess bandwidth wasted. My meager donation allieves my guilt for using the previews anyway, but that's just me. When I think of all the non-donators who now view videos the exact same way I do thanks to the preview option, it's no wonder the activity around here is falling off.

Just a point about bandwidth.... Last I checked it wasn't even an issue with most hosting agreements - we're not exactly in the early 2000s any more. In fact, I swear I heard from GQ or someone else @ AWA that our bandwidth usage isn't anywhere near where our hosting would start to care about it. I think similar things have been said in these threads. I don't think it's worth bringing up unless you're proposing some major design change that would promote constant Pandora-style streaming of videos.

EDIT - which, in hindsight, would seem pretty bad-ass in terms of feature-set, though with terrible implications all its own.

Partial previews isn't why youtube has more legal troubles than us... the fact that their format/rules allow for ANY type of video upload has landed them in legal troubles. Therefore people with interests across the board visit that site... Youtube is not just amvs, they have people uploading official music videos, clips from random tv shows, fansubs, entire tv shows, independent short movies, home made animations, entire full length movies. Fanvideos and AMVs are still a very niche hobby.

If you are worried that people will find our site, isn't that exactly what we are looking for right now? While opening up our site to new members may come with consequences any other method of attracting new members potentially has the same exact possible consequence.

Also most previews are a fraction of the bandwidth to download compared to downloading the whole thing... And I'm sure I heard similar sentiments that Bashar mentioned somewhere too.

Also, maybe your methods are different, but I find that if I watch a preview and enjoy it, I download it right there, and watch the downloaded file later if it comes to mind again.

Am I part of a dwindling contingent that doesn't bother to preview vids and just downloads every announced AMV so I can watch at full quality at my leisure and catalog and save it myself? Preview isn't really a feature that I use. So I don't really care which way this goes. Though I can see a benefit if we want to grab new users in opening up preview to non-members. Though in this day and age of gimmie-now attitude on the net is this really going to bring in new members or just bring in more leechers?

I also download videos, but that's mostly because if I want to stream a video, I would have to pause it from the beginning and wait for it to be about 75% done to play it if I don't want any interruption during playback.

I really don't think we can do anymore harm legally unless we allow embedding for previews anywhere on the web which we won't do or if we have, I'm unaware.

I really think making previews viewable without signing up will help ALOT more than the amv spotlight for getting new members... Another way it would help, people wont be forced into star rating it. A star rating based on a preview is bad anyway cause, while im not dissing it in anyway, they occasionally have defects compared a downloaded viewing. The org needs to understand that not everyone wants to be a critic or rate a vid, a vast majority just wants to watch and enjoy amvs without any hassles.

"The people cannot be [...] always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to [...] the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to public liberty. What country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned [...] that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."-Thomas Jefferson

I do agree on above posts. If we want to make this site more well known and bring it back to being _the_ place to go for AMVs, enabling no-signup previews of videos (entire video, not just 30 seconds) is going to be unavoidable. C&D is a risk to take then for sure, but hell, even if some more AMVs get disabled downloads from this, it's a rather small price to pay IMO. If you want to be on the safe side, make no-signup-required streaming (and prehaps downloading too) available for GPL'ed or free music, or music where artists explicitly permit non-profit use. There's TONS of music qualifying for that out there, and I'd be happy to see its use for AMVs being more encouraged.

I really don't think we can do anymore harm legally unless we allow embedding for previews anywhere on the web which we won't do or if we have, I'm unaware.

Donators can embed their own videos anywhere. People can watch them without signing up here (or even knowing it's from here unless they click on the chain symbol). I use it quite frequently frankly, as easy way to show my videos around.

Un-related, but on-topic, one thing that desperately needs to go is mandatory star ratings. Giving out star ratings after 10 downloads just keeps me from downloading an AMV here but instead watching it on YT sooo often. To people who bitch about not getting any feedback otherwise: Just make your videos suck less. If the new design will make the QC and star options more prominent, they will get used more often automatically.

I too dislike the mandatory star-rating system. I don't want to discourage people who seemed to worked hard to mediocre results. I don't want to rate videos that I only watched half of because it didn't seem worth waiting through a painfully slow internet connection just so I could feel fair. Etc, etc, ect.

I also think that people should be able to change how many stars they give a video, w/ only the most recent rating given being counted toward the stats.